THIRTEENTH TALK 25l
It is mentioned there again and again how hosts of
non-human entities knew of His coming and rejoiced
in it, how the Etevas and nature-spirits everywhere
felt His wonderful magnetic influence and gathered
round when anything great was going to happen,—for
example, when He was about to attain the Buddha-
hood, or to preach His first Sermon, or, earlier, at the
time of His birth. They say that Nature felt His Com-
ing and was responsive. Now there is a vast amount
of truth in that. Whenever any very great manifesta-
tion of higher power is taking place, the other and
more sensitive evolutions do feel it much more than
humanity feels it. We ought to feel it more, but we
do not. You, I hope, would, because you are turning
yourselves in that direction ; but the world at large,
though more developed than the nature-spirits, is
far less responsive because people have developed
themselves in the direction of strengthening the lower
mind and, practically, perhaps even intentionally, put
aside all the things belonging to the more spiritual side
of Nature. Thus a human being, although higher in the
scale of evolution, is often less sensitive than the lower
creatures. I have known of cats and dogs that were
more sensitive to higher influences than human beings,
not that thgy could get so much from them, but that
they knew of them when human beings did not; they
were not so entirely wrapped up in themselves. Man
develops far higher thought-power, of course, but then
he proceeds to put himself in a shell of his own